by Sally Prue
Miss Broom was walking across the classroom to her desk, and in another couple of seconds she was going to turn round. And then she’d see him. Worse than that, she’d see the open cupboard and know that Class Six had seen the cauldron. And the witch’s cloak. And the hat.
Luckily, Anil’s brain had a gold-plated hard drive. In the final second before Miss Broom’s round bottom plumped down onto her seat he put out a foot and kicked the cupboard door closed.
Everyone in Class Six heard the click! as it shut.
And Rodney, who was now locked inside the cupboard, heard it best of all.
The whole class froze with horror. Rodney was trapped inside the cupboard. Rodney, who was so stupid he didn’t believe in witches even after he’d seen the dancing skeletons in Miss Broom’s eyes. Any moment now he might start hammering on the door and then—
‘Now,’ said Miss Broom, smiling a wide smile that was at least three centimetres wider than any smile Class Six had ever seen before. ‘We’ve welcomed all the sweet and juicy new little Year Threes to the school at assembly, and we’ve given out all our exercise books, so we’d better get down to some work. Right, then...’
Her bright orange eyes swept the classroom and everyone hunched down as small as they could and tried to be invisible.
‘Jack,’ said Miss Broom.
The rest of Class Six felt relieved for a second, and then got all anxious again. Jack wasn’t as stupid as Rodney, but he wasn’t one of the clever ones. Why, he was Rodney’s best friend, so that proved it. There was no way he was going to be able to fool a witch.
Jack gulped.
‘Yes, Miss Broom?’
‘Do you know your nineteen times table, dear?’
A wave of panic and dismay went round Class Six. Nineteen times table? They’d learned up to ten times, and that had taken ages and ages. Nineteen?
But before Jack could reply, Miss Broom’s desk drawer opened all by itself and something came out of it. It was something long and slithery. And scaly. It was the same orange as Miss Broom’s eyes, and it had black Xs all the way down its back.
It rippled down onto Miss Broom’s lap, and then up over her big bosom to coil round her neck.
Class Six closed their eyes, crossed their fingers, and opened them again. Then they tried it again. But the big orange thing was still there, and it was still most definitely a large fat snake.
‘Aargh!’ said Emily faintly.
Miss Broom laughed. It was a musical laugh, but it was like icicles falling onto a frozen pond and it sent shivers down everyone’s spines.
‘There’s no need to be worried, Emily, dear,’ she said. ‘Algernon is going to help us learn our tables.’
Algernon raised his head and stared beadily at Class Six, and Class Six stared back, transfixed.
Winsome suddenly found her mind had gone so misty she couldn’t see from one end of a thought to the other. I’m being hypnotised, she realised. But then that thought dissolved into mist, too, and she was left staring and staring and staring at Algernon’s swaying head.
Algernon opened his mouth. Wider and wider and wider it went. It opened to the size of an orange, and then to the size of a dinner plate, and then to the size of a barrel. All Class Six could do was stare down past his gleaming sickle fangs and into the blackness of his throat.
And then, before Class Six had time to work out what was going on, a flock of poison-green scissor-shapes zoomed out of Algernon’s mouth and came flying straight towards them.
The quickest of the children ducked down under their tables, but it was no good. The scissor-shapes swooped and slipped through the air, fast as bats, and in a few seconds they had wrapped themselves round the wrists of everyone in Class Six.
Jack squawked and tried to pull the thing off, but it was no good because the X shape was sinking into his skin. It got fainter and fainter and then quite suddenly it vanished altogether.
Jack looked round and found that all the X shapes had disappeared.
Everyone was frozen, stiff with horror, either on the floor or under a table or hiding behind a chair. They were all afraid to move in case their hands fell off, or began to do things by themselves.
Miss Broom smiled round at them all.
‘Well, that was exciting, wasn’t it,’ she said. ‘Now. Let’s just make sure it’s worked. Anil!’
Anil made a noise like a dying frog. He was clutching his wrist as if he was afraid it was going to fall to pieces.
‘What’s thirteen times twenty-one, please, Anil?’
‘Two hundred and seventy-three,’ said Anil, at once.
The others blinked a bit—but then Anil was a brain at maths, after all, as he kept telling them.
‘Quite right. Good boy. Winsome!’
Winsome’s mouth moved, but she didn’t seem to be able to make any noise at all.
‘What’s fifteen times seventeen, please?’
‘Two hundred and fifty-five,’ said Winsome—and then she clapped her hands to her mouth and looked nearly as horrified as if she’d just spat out a tarantula.
‘Excellent, dear. Jack! Twenty-seven times eighty-six?’
Class Six looked at each other with pale faces. Anil and Winsome were the cleverest people in the class, but Jack was much too fidgety to think. Even picking up his pen sometimes took too much concentration for him. So there was no way...
Jack’s eyes bulged until he looked even more like a bald gerbil than usual. And then strange sounds began to come out of his mouth.
Incredible, extraordinary, amazing sounds.
‘Two thousand three hundred and twenty-two!’ he squawked.
Class Six gasped. Miss Broom smiled and stroked Algernon’s scaly back.
‘Marvellous, Algernon,’ she said. ‘You’ve done that beautifully, as always. And what a relief to have got our times tables out of the way. Class Six, I think we should say thank you to Algernon, don’t you?’
Class Six exchanged glances. They’d never spoken to a snake before, but even so none of them felt the slightest wish to argue with Miss Broom.
‘Thank you, Algernon,’ they all said.
Algernon bowed his flat head politely, as if in reply, and then he slid back down over Miss Broom’s big bosom and back into her desk drawer.
‘Algernon’s such a wonderful creature,’ said Miss Broom proudly. ‘But I must warn you, dears. He would never hurt you on purpose, of course, but I shouldn’t disturb him when he’s in his drawer. Because of course he is a poisonous snake. I expect you saw his fangs.’
Jack was poking his little finger into his ear and then taking it out and looking at it, as if in hope of finding some trace of his new cleverness. But Miss Broom’s words caught his attention.
‘Poisonous?’ he echoed. ‘Really? Wow. Is he an adder, then, Miss Broom?’
Miss Broom gave a tinkly little icicle laugh and twenty-nine shudders juddered down twenty-nine spines.
‘An adder?’ she echoed. ‘Why, of course not, dear. No. Adders are rare and special, but Algernon is even rarer and more special than that.’
‘Really, Miss Broom?’ asked Anil, who was interested in everything to do with science.
‘Really,’ Miss Broom told them all, very seriously. ‘After all, Algernon helped you all with your times tables, didn’t he?’
Winsome jumped as if something had stung her.
‘You mean...’ she began, and then her voice faded away in amazement.
Miss Broom nodded.
‘That’s right, Winsome,’ she said. ‘Algernon is a poisonous snake, but he isn’t an adder at all. No. Dear Algernon’s a multiplier.’
‘Well, Class Six,’ said Miss Broom. ‘We’ve learned our times tables up to nine hundred and ninety-nine times, and that’s enough work for anyone in one morning.’
She gave them all a picture of a vampire in a cobwebby castle to colour in. The only slight problem was that the vampire kept getting up and walking about, which made it hard to keep within the lines
.
Class Six worked quietly, occasionally whispering things like what’s fifty-three times fourteen? and hey, I’m a genius! to each other.
The back of Anil’s colouring sheet was covered in calculations:
and things like that. He was the only one who wasn’t very pleased.
‘Hey, you know those fourteen doughnuts I ate at playtime yesterday?’ whispered Slacker. ‘That was five thousand seven hundred and forty calories. That’s quite a lot, isn’t it?’
‘Masses,’ hissed Serise. ‘No wonder you’re so—’
—but then there came a noise. It was an odd, unearthly sound, a little like someone sawing a piece of wood.
And it was coming from the cupboard with DANGER written on the door.
Class Six froze. In all the excitement they’d almost forgotten that Rodney was shut up in the cupboard.
‘What’s he doing?’ asked Serise, in the smallest possible whisper.
‘Perhaps he’s fallen into the cauldron and it’s turned him into a bear,’ squeaked Emily.
‘He sounds as if he’s in agony,’ whispered Jack.
But Winsome sat up in sudden understanding.
‘No!’ she said. ‘I know what it is. It’s so dark in there that Rodney’s decided it’s night time, and he’s gone to sleep. He’s snoring!’
Krgggggggggggghhhhhh came from the cupboard. Krggggghhhhhh
Slacker began coughing to try to cover up the sound.
Miss Broom looked up from where she was reading a huge ancient book with a star drawn on the front.
‘Are you all right, Slacker?’ she asked.
‘Yes, he’s fine, miss,’ said Winsome, hastily. ‘There must be a bit of dust about, I think.’
‘Really? How unusual.’
Miss Broom snapped her fingers, and immediately half a dozen pink and blue striped rats emerged from Miss Broom’s waste paper basket and began to run round the classroom, whisking any bits of dust into their pouches with their long tufted tails.
‘I didn’t know rats in this country had pouches,’ said Jack, lifting up his feet for the rats to sweep underneath them.
‘They don’t,’ said Winsome.
Krgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh
The whole class burst out coughing this time.
‘I think the dust’s got right down my throat,’ gasped Anil.
‘Water, water!’ coughed Slacker, dramatically.
Miss Broom blinked her orange eyes, and in their reflection Class Six saw a rocky desert with three vultures perched on the ribcage of some large beast.
Krggggggghhhhhhhhhhh
Cough! Cough-cough choke cough. COUGH!
‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Broom, rather alarmed. ‘I’ve never come across this sort of reaction to a simple times table lesson before.’
‘Please, Miss Broom,’ said Anil hoarsely. ‘There are some big water jugs in the dining room. If we could have some water...’
Miss Broom got up in a hurry.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I won’t be long, Class Six. Do try to stay alive until I get back!’
And she hurried out of the room.
Class Six stopped coughing and looked at each other.
‘Right,’ said Winsome, getting up. ‘We’ve got about three minutes to get Rodney out of the cupboard.’
Serise went and banged on the door. ‘Rodney!’ she called. ‘Rodney, you idiot!’
Pause.
Then:
‘Mum?’ a voice said sleepily. ‘Is it daytime?’
Everyone groaned.
‘Rodney?’ called Winsome. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Yes, Mum,’ said Rodney’s voice through the woodwork. ‘But I think my eyes have stopped working. And why is my bed standing up on end?’
Serise rolled her eyes.
‘It’s no good expecting Rodney to be any help,’ she muttered. She tugged sharply on the door handle. Nothing happened, so she tried again. And again.
‘I can’t shift it at all,’ she said. ‘It must have a really good lock.’
Behind them, Anil frowned.
‘Locked?’ he echoed. ‘But it can’t be locked. Look, there’s no keyhole.’
Everyone looked and saw that Anil was quite right.
‘But...’ said Winsome.
‘But...’ said Emily.
Anil began walking up and down, his fingers to his forehead in his best mad-professor way.
‘So how do you get the door open?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps you need a magic spell.’
‘Well, that old book Miss Broom was reading looked like a spell book,’ Jack said. ‘She put it back in her drawer.’
‘Yes, with Algernon,’ snapped Serise. ‘Do you feel like putting your hands into Miss Broom’s drawer to get it out, Jack?’
Jack didn’t.
‘Does anyone know any magic words?’ asked Emily timidly.
‘Abracadabra,’ suggested someone.
‘Hey presto?’
‘Sesame!’
‘Please,’ suggested Slacker thoughtfully. ‘Thank you. And pardon.’
There was a sudden clatter from inside the cupboard, and a voice said: ouch! Ouch! OUCH!
‘Are you all right?’ called Winsome anxiously.
‘Yes,’ said Rodney.
Emily began jumping up and down as if she was about to wet herself. ‘Miss Broom will be back any minute. And then she’ll turn us into rats or something. We’ve got to get him out! We’ve got to get him out!’
‘I don’t think she’d turn us all into rats,’ objected Anil. ‘I mean, she’d get into trouble if her whole class disappeared. I don’t think she could really disappear more than one or two of us.’
Serise snorted.
‘Well, that’s all right, then, if only one or two of us disappear. Hey, do you remember Wayne Mitchell? Because he disappeared last year, didn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Winsome. ‘But only because he moved to Watford.’
Emily looked more frightened than ever.
Anil was still pacing up and down, scowling. ‘There must be some spell or word that opens it. Something special...’
‘Oh, I wish we had an ordinary teacher!’ wailed Emily. ‘I wish our teacher was just an ordinary human, and the most exciting thing that ever happened was getting a go on the computer!’
Anil stopped dead.
‘That’s it!’ he said.
‘That’s what?’ asked everyone, but Anil was striding up to the door of the cupboard.
‘That’s the magic word,’ he said. ‘The one that gets you in to almost anything. The one people use all the time even though you’re never supposed to use it.’
Jack made a puzzled face.
‘Do you mean...bum?’ he asked.
Anil tutted, and put his hand on the cupboard door. Then he said, in a loud commanding voice:
‘PASSWORD!’
And instantly the door swung open.
Rodney had been in the dark so long the daylight dazzled him. He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes.
‘Look at the state of him!’ said Serise, whisking the witch’s hat off his head. It must have fallen there off the coat hook. ‘He’s all over cobwebs!’
He was all over spiders, too—big juicy-looking ones with a skull-and-crossbones design on their backs—but luckily they seemed to like the light even less than Rodney did, and they quickly wound all the bits of cobweb into balls, stuck their knitting needles under their arms, and scuttled back into the cupboard.
‘Quick!’ said Emily, doing a little jig of terror. ‘I can hear her footsteps. Oh, quick!’
Slacker pushed Rodney into the nearest chair, and all the rest of the class threw themselves into their places. Some of them even remembered to start coughing again. When Miss Broom arrived with a tray full of beakers they were all red in the face and breathing hard.
Miss Broom viewed them all, still puzzled, as she began to hand out the beakers of water.
‘You all must have some sort of an allergy to…er…to
my special methods,’ she said, as she went round the classroom. ‘Perhaps I shall have to stop using them for the time being.’
Class Six sipped their glasses of water and felt very relieved. Miss Broom was going to stop doing magic for a while, and Rodney had been rescued from the cupboard. They were safe.
For the moment.
There must have been something itchy in the witch’s cupboard, though, because Rodney had started scratching and scratching and scratching at his head.
Class Six were so weak with relief that they didn’t even have the strength to fight to be first in the queue at lunch time.
The children from the other classes stared at Class Six curiously, but none of them dared come up to ask any questions. They all knew about Miss Broom. Every year, Class Six was the best-behaved class in the whole school—and everyone knew why.
It was terror. Sheer, utter terror.
Unless, of course, it was something even worse…
Class Six stood quietly in line, as dull as cows, grateful simply to be still alive, and the only person who wasn’t completely shattered was Rodney Wright. The sleep in the cupboard seemed to have perked him up, because he was quite lively. He kept squiggling and scratching. And scratching. And scratching.
‘What was it like in the cupboard?’ asked Emily timidly, when they were all sitting down and trying to summon up the energy to eat.
Rodney scratched his head.
‘Smelly,’ he said. ‘And dark. I was a bit worried at first because the luminous grasshoppers had huge teeth, but they left me alone so it was all right.’
‘Grasshoppers?’ echoed Anil.
‘Yeah. They were all sort of oily green and purple. But it was OK, they just sat quietly on their shelf and carried on playing backgammon.’
‘I would have screamed and screamed and screamed,’ said Emily, with a shiver. ‘To be locked up with magic grasshoppers…’
Rodney scratched his head again.
‘There’s no such thing as magic,’ he said.
